Indie Developers Speak Highly of Wii U eShop

Positive comments suggest that Nintendo is working well with smaller studios

If you ask the average WiiWare developer how much money they made off the back of the service, you'd probably be shocked. In the past, indie devs have been less than positive about Nintendo's online portal, providing figures which make for very grim reading - even more so when you consider that they have to meet a minimum sales target before they see any financial return on their hard work.

Thankfully, it would seem that Nintendo has turned the corner with regards to "garage" development teams. Speaking to Not Enough Shaders, several small-scale studios have praised the company's approach on Wii U - as well as revealing several interesting points.

The issue of revenue cropped up several times, as it's something of a touchy subject. However, most of the developers interviewed said that Nintendo's cut is around the same as what Apple and Steam demand on their services.

Another comment made is that Nintendo is very easy to work with, and appears to have learned from its previous mistakes. Toki Tori 2 developer Two Tribes' Collin Van Ginkel had this to say:

We have been very vocal towards Nintendo from the early days of WiiWare about what we thought of the shop. It wasn’t always pretty and I think we can all agree that it hasn’t been the success it could have been. Since then we’ve been talking to them on a regular basis and I personally think they’ve done a lot of listening.

Mention was also made of the significance of the recent Unity deal, with Infinite State Games and AckkStudios both making positive noises about supporting Wii U as a result of the agreement.

Be sure to check out the entire interview, as it makes very optimistic reading for those of you hoping that indie developers will be a big part of the Wii U story.

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Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded.

They'll be doing a great service for developers if they continue from the 3DS and let people pay the exact amount w/ credit cards for game purchases. The Wii had a bottom of $10 for 1000 points which gave me good enough reason to NOT buy $5 or $6 games.

Here's a challenge guys. If you're an indie developer and want to develop a game for Wii U where do you go and signup? I googled and got nothing, no wonder why Apple/Android have so many apps as they are clear and easy to find out how.

Great! Wii Ware wasn't all that great but everything has its ups and downs. Wii Ware had about 10-15 good games.

Now, i hope developers make fantastic games for the eShop. Sega seems low on dough so don't expect much more Sonic 4. Nintendo now understands that it's better to make friends than enemies... 40MB come on!

@phoenixology: iOS and Android are practically open platforms for development seeing as they're mobile, that's why they're able to have their information plastered on to every brick wall out there. And judging from the quality control on both platforms, I'd say it's easy to see why Nintendo is more strict on their digital platform information and dispensal of SDK kits. At the end of the day, it's a standard console gaming platform; they do need some discretion in place. Anyhow, give them time - we've hardly even gotten any revelations of the Wii U eShop yet, so it's too early to judge their embrace.

Having said that, I'm hoping they'll establish their platform to be more welcoming to smaller indie groups, while still maintaining a better standard of quality control. I wrote something on this issue a few days ago, and I'm glad to see it seems to be turning out the way many are hoping it does.

THIS IS AMAZING!! I hope that Nintendo treats indie developers even better then Microsoft does then a lot more indies will hop on over to the Nintendo side the SMART side instead. Hell a lot of good can come from respecting indies not only do they make great games maybe one day a indie developer will make a game so awesome that it gets them published by a major company then all their games will only be on WiiU GIVING USE EVEN MORE GREAT EXCLUSIVES TO PLAY!! and to rube right in the faces of those pig nosed 360 and PS3 fanboys he he he >